Lane Education Network
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program
Award Number 41-40-94029
In addition to a general survey of the network, individual progress reports from several of the participants are attached below.
Router and network connection: Sacred Heart 1 Jan 95 - 1 Mar 95 Router installation: LCC, 4J, Springfield, Bethel, EPL 1 Feb 95 - 1 Mar 95 Circuit installation: LCC, 4J, Springfield, Bethel, EPL 1 Feb 95 - 15 Mar 95 Access point room preparation 1 Nov 94 - 1 Feb 95 Access point installation: UO, LCC, Springfield, 4J, 1 Dec 95 - 1 Mar 95 Bethel Leased circuit upgrades: Springfield, 4J 1 Jan 95 - 1 Mar 95 Access point installation: Eugene Public Library 1 Mar 95 - 1 July 95We are generally on schedule for most milestones. Routers and circuits have been installed for connections to Lane Community College (LCC), 4J School District, Springfield School District, and the Eugene Public Library. The connection to Sacred Heart Health System, a link that is being implemented as an extension of the UO campus network to take advantage of the proximity of UO and Sacred Heart has been deferred until late April due to scheduling problems for fiber installation. The connection to the Bethel school district has been delayed due to a change in termination location, and is now scheduled for late April. Access point installations are proceding in stages, with UO complete, LCC, Springfield, and 4J in progress, and Bethel now rescheduled for September.
In addition to providing the network connectivity and access described in the original grant application, we have been successful in expanding the scope of the metropolitan-area network. We are adding a connection to Dynamix, one of the original grant participants that we had not originally believed could be connected to the network. We are also using the grant funded connection to the City of Eugene to provide network access, including Internet access, to a number of city locations not originally anticipated.
We considered several outsourcing models for the network manager but concluded that management by the University of Oregon's Computing Center would be the most cost-effective approach. The Computing Center developed a budget for ongoing maintenance and for providing Internet connectivity to the network. Based on this budget, we obtained committments from each of the connected participants for equal shares of the non-line costs associated with managing the network. We anticipate adding new participants over time to provide an expanding pool of funding for network improvements.
This management structure, where the network manager is a university member of the group, parallels the early management structure of several of the NSFnet regional networks (notably BARRnet, which was a project of Stanford University) in the late 1980s. As with these NSFnet regional networks, we anticipate eventual evolution of the network manager role, perhaps eventually including outsourcing to a commerical provider, privatization of the network, or a transfer of the network to some other local government agency. However, the current management structure seems adequate for our needs for the next two to three years at least.
In addition to the original sites proposed for connectivity in our NTIA grant application, the Lane Education Network recently added an additional site, Dynamix. Dynamix is a branch of the Sierra Group, a computer game and software developer, and is located in the Riverfront Research Park on the University of Oregon campus. Although Dynamix was a participant and software development collaborator in the original grant application, technical concerns including network security originally discouraged us from establishing an actual network connection. We are pleased that these concerns could be addressed.
The Bethel School District will be posting a position opening for a network manager sometime in the next two weeks. We will also have 1 FTE for network and computer training.
Based on our preliminary discussions with the consultants, we anticipate having Willamette High School, Cascade and Shasta Middle Schools, and the Bethel District Office fully networked by September 1995. There will be some WAN presence in each of the other five sights (five elementary schools) in September. Those schools will have complete LANs phased in over the following 12 months.
The Lane Education Network T1 line will now be installed at the Bethel District Office instead of at Willamette High School. This decision was strictly a logistical one based on the need to consolidate district network components.
We are in the process of spending first year money for technology made available last November by the passage of the school district's bond measure. Willamette High School will have in place the six work stations, graphic work station, server and other network components by September to match the requirements of the NTIA grant.
The City of Eugene, with assistance from RIS and the University of Oregon, is in the process of setting up a City of Eugene World Wide Web server. There will be four applications on this server in this first phase:
Fiber Connection to the Library
Bids are opening on March 29th for conduit construction from the Library to a vault at 11th & Charnelton which connects to the City's network. Construction will probably be done the week of April 8th. The Request For Quotes for fiber installation will be going out the week of March 27th. Installation is expected to be completed during the first week of May.
The PCs that will be used at the library have been received and are stored at ISD. Three will be delivered to the Library for stand alone use as soon as the library is ready for them. The PCs for public use will be installed once cabling is completed. Cabling of the Board Room where the NTIA PCs are to be installed will be scheduled for sometime during the first two weeks of April. The hub, ethernet station card, standby power unit, and fiber optic transceivers have been received and are stored at ISD and RIS pending installation.
Eugene Conference Center Cabling
While not formally a part of the NTIA grant project, the City of Eugene has connected the Eugene Community Conference Center for Internet access. The Conference Center has been connected to RIS via fiber optics. Category 5 cable has been run between the fiber termination point and the Hansberry Room to provide six connections. For a February conference a hub with Ethernet card, fiber optic transceivers and router port were temporarily put in place. RIS arranged the Internet connections through the State network. A more permanent arrangement for the Conference Center would include cabling all the rooms, establishing another fiber termination to serve the west half of the building, and providing the appropriate equipment--hubs, cards, FOTS, router ports, etc. Also, the permanent Internet connection through either the State of Oregon or U of O would have to be established by RIS.
In support of the City of Eugene's participation in the NTIA grant, RIS is cooperating with U of O staff on the installation of a router, DSU/CSU equipment, and a T1 circuit for the network connnection to the NTIA network hub router located at the U of O. The T1 circuit was installed in February and the network equipment was installed in March. The connection is being used in a test mode while the other work needed for full operational use is being performed.
Some of the other necessary work includes implementing internal network changes needed to make effective use of the network connections supported by the NTIA grant. In planning these changes RIS developed a network security strategy paper and has used that paper as the basis for acquiring two additional routers paid for by RIS partner agency funds. One of these routers has been installed to subdivide the RIS consortium network into an internal business network and an external public access network with only this "gateway" router connecting the two networks. The second router is being installed as the connection point for public access systems that will be used to supply information to the other NTIA participants as well as to citizens with Internet access.
The router that was installed as a gateway between the internal and external portions of the RIS consortium network is being configured with filters to keep unauthorized network traffic out of the internal network. Until now, TCP/IP use within the network supported by RIS has been limited to just servers and other multi-user computers, so RIS is now planning for full TCP/IP management services to assign IP addresses and provide Domain Name Services for all workstations and computers within both the internal and external portions of the network.
The "public access" router will support connections to the Eugene Public Library, the Eugene Conference Center, and a World Wide Web server housed at RIS that the City of Eugene is setting up for public access as described above. RIS has also entered into discussions with City of Springfield staff regarding a dedicated public access connection to the Springfield Public Library, and it is anticipated that the City of Springfield connection will be installed and working this summer.
RIS staff have also been assisting with development and testing of PC and Macintosh Internet access software configurations to be used by City of Eugene and other RIS agencies for access to information maintained by the other NTIA partners as well as throughout the Internet. Prototype configurations for Macintoshes and PCs are now working, using existing LAN connections supported by the network equipment purchased with NTIA grant funds.
Our best guess as to when we will be fully attached is by April 15.
A district NTIA steering committee has been working on placing applications on the network. We are making progress with language acquisition planning through collaboration with the UO Yamada Language Center and several foreign language departments. UO faculty and faculty from all four district high schools and the Opportunity Center have met and discussed ways to collaborate. We have begun by creating a listserv on ForLangNet, operated by the UO Yamada Language Center.
In the fall, the district will implement CyberSchool as a network-based model for teaching. CyberSchool will begin by offering a class at all high schools called, Crusin' the Information Superhighway. In addition, several teachers from various disciplines are planning to offer classes in specific disciplines using network- based teaching strategies. ForLangNet and other servers will be used to provide information resources from all high schools, the UO, and other sources for course work.
To promote these activities, the district has hired a teacher from South Eugene High School, Tom Layton, who is noted for his network-based instructional strategies. Tom will work with teachers from other schools who are interested in pursuing use of the LEN and other Internet sources as part of their teaching strategies. He believes that network technologies provide opportunities for fundamental change in teaching and learning and has demonstrated this through implementing SouthTech, a student run business within the school, and Asafo which consists of an advisor and a group of students who help everyone at their school learn about technology. With Tom working at the district level, Asafo will be implemented at many, if not all, K-12 schools in the district.
In addition, by the end of 1995 the district will implement four key networked CD-ROM resources:
Installation of the NTIA network at LCC is paralleling the installation of the internal network at LCC. The T1 line is installed to the center of the campus and design plans are complete for the NTIA network and its interface with the LCC campus network. Site plans for the placement of the multimedia equipment are finalized and await some remodeling.
--grown at a brisk rate OPN started the year serving about 300 members of our community using a SPARC 2 computer and a half dozen phone lines with modems. At present we have a membership of about 3000, a new SPARC 10 computer and 70 phone lines. We have four part-time paid staff and a small army of volunteers. We are gratified to have been able to grow steadily with only a couple of cases where our growth squeezed our system capacity
--established new services During this year we have upgraded software in many areas including the USEnet news, e-mail, gopher, and world wide web. We have also added IRC capabilities.
--placed a small number of public access terminals in various locations in the community OPN public access terminals are now in place at Icky's Teahouse (located in an economically depressed part of town), First Place (a homeless service center), Maria's videos (a video store serving the hispanic community), and at the Fifth St. Public Market. Additional terminals are planned at the public library in cooperation with the City of Eugene. While we hoped for many more sites by this point, the first steps we have taken are teaching us a great deal about how to do this successfully.
--obtained important support from a variety of sources in the Eugene-Springfield community Our membership continues to contribute generously and new corporate donors have made very important contributions. These donors include Symantec, TCI, US Bank, Chambers Communications, and Dynamix Corp. Other major donors include Eben Dobson and Clif Cox. We are fortunate to have had such generous support from so many sources.
--developed itself organizationally We have obtained ownership of all system and organizational assets, elected a new board, expanded our governing council, added four, mainly part-time paid staff, and are steadily developing our policies and management methods. We believe that we have solved the problem of determining the necessary level of system resources to serve our growing membership.
There have been important developments in other areas as well, not least of which is an increased confidence and level of expertise among those serving in all the roles of the organization.
We expect to benefit significantly from Lane Education Network grant funds in establishing better backup systems and more and faster communication lines.
We are now providing news feeds to several other members of the Lane Education Network, including:
In our work, access is viewed as both vertical and horizontal integration. By having public school teachers work with discipline expert faculty, we are trying to achieve vertical integration across subject matter in both the university and the public schools. By having teachers work with their peers in the high schools, within an electronic environment using World Wide Web as a server, we are trying to achieve horizontal integration. We believe the curriculum reforms are best initiated by presenting a series of exemplar problems for student self-assessment. The domain of these problems is from university beginning classes and should, in turn, be used to generate two professional development outcomes. First, they should bridge the gap between faculty and public school teachers, leading to discussions of focus: How are such exemplars predictive of successful outcomes? and why are they representative of the standards for success? Second, they should lead to changed practices both within and among various high school classes. As teachers come to work with these problems in their classroom, they should help orient a connection between instruction and assessment that is highly related to the Certificates of Initial and Advanced Mastery. Furthermore, by using electronic media, these changes can be more readily shared across the entire high school network within the three district area. In the end, as students succeed in high schools, they should leave schools more readily prepared for post-secondary environments (either through more advanced credit loads through Advanced Placement [AP] performance and/or higher level admissions performance upon entrance. Once performing within university classes, course outcomes should be higher grade point averages.
By formulating this particular model and our overall goal, we hope to achieve the following major three objectives:
To make this reform happen in a local context with immediate applications, the College of Education recently convened a meeting of public school math, science, technology and curriculum teachers and administrators to meet with College of Education and University of Oregon science/math departmental faculty. The purpose of this meeting was to explore avenues for the use of technology, particularly diverse mechanisms of telecommunications, in support of enriched and accelerated curriculum for secondary school students in the Eugene/Springfield community. The meeting was structured in such a way as to support a free flow of ideas and to encourage diverse views regarding the nature of University of Oregon-Eugene/Springfield Public School relationships and the concept of a more seamless K-16 curriculum.
Following brief introductory comments describing the purpose of the meeting and important new opportunities for interaction between the university and public schools afforded by recent technological developments, each participant was invited to address issues of concern to which new kinds of relationships between the university and secondary schools (or school districts) might bring some resolution. These comments were interspersed with general discussion and further consideration of the potential roles of the university and, in particular, the College of Education.
Comments by participants regarding potential interaction between the university and area secondary schools fell into several categories. These included teacher oriented activities such as providing subject matter support, general staff development, assistance with the assessment process (particularly as related to CIM and CAM); student oriented activities such as coursework and non-coursework based learning activities and non-instructional student services; and the exploration of non-traditional modes of instruction and curriculum delivery. To provide a structure to these concerns, we have categorized the issues into three broad groups:
Enrichment. There is potential for greater involvement of the University of Oregon in activities designed to enrich existing high school course offerings and related learning experiences. This does not imply acceleration through development of new courses, but rather suggests the creation of learning experiences related to the existing curriculum that would provide new opportunities to identify and use resources, to apply knowledge, and to engage in problem solving activities that grow out of and reinforce high school science/math curriculums.
Professional development. Issues and concerns regarding professional development are less well defined than for enrichment and assessment. They relate to a general perceived need for a wide range of professional development activities, addressing both pedagogy and subject matter, in combination with a concern for making use of instructional opportunities arising from applications of technology. There is a sense that new technologies are presenting exciting and important opportunities for curricular and instructional innovation, but that realization of these opportunities will require of teachers new knowledge about technology and enhanced capacity to use that technology to access expanded resources and implement new instructional strategies.
Assessment as access and process using technology. A central issue in both the curricular reforms and opportunities for professional development is the connectivity between settings. This issue was raised by both university departmental and secondary school faculty, and focused directly on the transition of students from high school to university, and indirectly to broader concerns regarding secondary school science/math curriculum, assessment, teacher subject matter expertise, and preparation of students for the more advanced curriculum at the university level. Basically, a need exists for the university to articulate expectations and standards for subject matter competencies of entering students and to assist secondary school teachers in the assessment and development of these competencies, in their students prior to matriculation to university level coursework.
Example Curriculum Text ("Life Science" - Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1989)
In the following text, from a unit entitled A Classification System for Organisms, the actual materials being ported into the web are summaries and created graphic organizers, to avoid violations of copyright. In the address noted above, we actually have included many different concept maps within both social studies and science, all of which can be downloaded as PICT files.
The products sold in a hardware store vary. they differ in size, shape, structure, and use. Sometimes, products which look similar may be found in the same section of the store. In other cases, products which have similar uses are grouped together.
Organisms, too, vary. Every kind of organism resembles some kinds more than others. Scientists group organisms that are similar together. Organisms that are similar often live in similar places and have similar needs. By knowing what group an organism belongs to, one knows something about where and how it lives. Grouping organisms helps scientists study both ancient and present-day living things.
Grouping is an orderly way to study a large number of objects. Any set of objects may be grouped in a variety of different ways. One person may group the objects according to shape. Another may group the objects according to what they do. Each system tells something about all the objects in a group. The best grouping is the one that gives the most information about group members.
Example Instructional Lecture Transcription
On Overhead: Classification or taxonomy is probably the most important foundation of modern biology. Without it, scientists would have no basis for understanding similarities or differences between the millions of living things on earth.
T Read the statement and try to put it into your own words. Remember the word taxonomy means classification.
S That classification is the most important thing in biology.
T Put it in your own words.
S Without classification scientists wouldn't understand the comparisons between old and new things.
T Good. Tom used a new word - comparison.
S If you didn't classify between a boy or a girl, it's like who are you?
T If I couldn't classify this plant (shows cactus to class) and tell its similarities and differences to other plants, there would be no way to compare it to another plant. What kind of plant is this?
S Cactus.
T So you would classify this plant in the cactus taxonomy or family. That's what this unit is all about. You are going to look at how things are similar or different. You will be like real scientists and put things into classification groups.
T In the paper last week an article told of a scientist who found a plant in Australia. He noticed that it looked like the trees in Jurassic Park. All the plants in that movie were made to look like trees in prehistoric times. As it turns out, he took a piece of the branch and took it to a science lab in Melbourne. They thought it looked just like a fossil from the dinosaur era. They studied it and found it was a part of a small group of trees that live in a ravine and have survived since dinosaur times. They are now growing seeds. There are very few undiscovered places left in the world. We could never have known what it was without someone making a classification.
S Or without the man who found it.
T Right. We could not have known what it was without classification. We would not have known what it was without being able to look at similarities and differences.
Sample Performance Formats for Organizing Student Responses
We are currently acquiring and digitizing a number of different student responses to problems formatted in several different ways that contextualize problem-solving in the classroom. In general, the menu from which we will broadly sample includes the following:
Task Outcome Indicator Single day lab (hard sciences)/activity Content-Format-Outcome Ratings (social sciences) On-demand problem-solving essay Flow Chart (evaluate-explain-predict) Journal reflection Writing Evaluation Rubrics Perception probe of important Concept counts concepts-ideas Lecture notes Accuracy-Detail-Organization Graphic organizers and concept maps Hierarchical Linkages Reading-worksheet assignment Correctness Independent project Multiple Rubrics Student self-evaluation Likert RatingsExample Student Responses to Problems on Plate Tectonics
In the following examples, we have transcribed actual student responses who represent high scores, relative to other 8th graders. In our eventual unit, however, such responses would be part of the full range of formats noted above.
Why have volcanoes formed at spreading boundaries?
Volcanoes have formed at spreading boundaries because there's already a weak spot there and the magma is forced upward.
Explain what occurs at a colliding boundary.
At a colliding boundary mountains can occur and there can be a subduction zone. Trenches can be formed too.
What would happen to the crust if boundaries spread, but did not collide?
There would be a huge ocean pushing the continents apart more and more until they could not go anywhere else but to run into each other so this question doesn't make sense because that would be impossible.
Example Scoring Guides for Judging Student Responses
Each unit eventually would have a set of appropriate scoring guides to help teachers make judgments about the quality of student responses (using a 1 to 5 or 6 point scale).
A. Effectively interprets and synthesizes information
While the scoring guides are useful for ascertaining the anchors for making judgments, teacher self-reflections are useful in determining the points of value and in setting minimum passing marks.